Restaurant review: Station Road in Adelaide CBD

This new CBD venue is a scene disrupter, hiring a celebrated Parisian chef to create a divine epicurean experience.

Apero Time with Whispering Angel and Condesa will be held at Station Road, Adelaide Festival Plaza, on Fridays in 2025.

A high calibre chef and staggering wine list help this restaurant in a new city precinct make a bold entrance.

This story begins on a bitterly cold Paris evening, sitting on a wooden bench outside the rollicking seafood bistro Clamato.

When the doors finally open, we nab a table and the mood starts to warm.

A waiter engages in some good-natured banter. He wants to know where we are from. “Adelaide,” we say. “That’s in the centre of …”

“I know Adelaide,” he interrupts. “An old chef from here has moved there. He was one of the best … brilliant.”

Interior at Station Road restaurant, Festival Tower.

The chef in question, it turns out, is Baine Stubbs. And, just two months later, after finishing a fabulous dinner at Station Road, I can understand the glowing assessment.

Station Road is the newly opened restaurant at the base of the first tower looking out to the waterworks and metallic “trees” of the revamped Festival Plaza. It is owned and operated by the people behind East End Cellars and marks an ambitious shift from the casual wine-bar/bistro model.

The group has spent more than two years on the project, working with architects Studio Nine to turn a wide, shallow space into a series of zones including a wine room (of course), kitchen, central bar and more open dining area.

Mud crab, preserved chilli and betel leaf.

Lamb rack, braised shoulder and peas. Picture: Jack Fenby

The streaked marble cladding of the bar is gorgeous and a handful of eye-catching contemporary canvases are spread across the walls but, otherwise, the brown/beige/vanilla decor is a little bit hotel foyer. There are logistical issues as well. The gap between tables in some sections (including ours) is minimal, making it difficult for waiting staff to do their job and restricting access for the sparkling wine and cheese trolleys that are meant to add some old-school razzle-dazzle.

Such negative considerations, however, are far outweighed by the positives. Those staff are of the highest caliber, showing the benefit of proper in-house training with their detailed knowledge of the kitchen’s craft and a staggering wine list that, at 800 labels strong, is still growing (hopefully to include a few bottles under $65).

But the real drawcard is the chef who, like pavlova and Neil Finn, is a New Zealander that we might soon be desperate to call our own. In a short time, Stubbs has compiled an enviable CV, with five years at Melbourne’s Vue de Monde before moving to France to work for the group behind World’s Best 50 restaurant Septime and its offshoot Clamato.

His first menu doesn’t give too much heed to trends or hackneyed catchphrases. Ingredients don’t have to be uber-local (note the Queensland tiger prawns) or seasonal (peas and asparagus in midsummer) if they are the best quality. Hard work and haute technique underpin most plates but nothing is particularly French or fancy.

Interior of the dining room at Station Road restaurant.

Price and value will be very much in the eye of the beholder. Consider the effort that goes into picking over Queensland mud crabs before questioning how a single miang-style betel leaf filled with lobes of the meat, preserved chilli and garlic shoots can cost $16. You’ll be happy to spend it again, I promise. The same goes for the $48 rock lobster cannelloni that, by the way, is the biggest seller.

Quail is skinned and deboned, before rolling around a mousse made from the offcuts, cognac-soaked currants and coarsely ground black pepper. This ballotine is wrapped in pancetta, poached, roasted, rested on a mushroom puree and, finally, glazed with a compound butter. It turns the little bird into a swoon-worthy, decadent package (and extra points for plating up individual portions when we are sharing).

Bigger plates are less complicated, more reassuring than what comes before. A sauce that melds the deep ocean notes of dashi with a plush beurre blanc elevates a simple soy-glazed fillet of New Zealand snapper to something rather special. The lamb – a pair of cutlets, braised shoulder meat, cauliflower puree, peas, mint – has been done a trillion times before but take a slice of that perfect blushing meat, add a little of the other elements and all that roast dinner pleasure is somehow amplified.

Finally, the classic rum baba is deconstructed and put together again at the table, with a syrup-soaked brioche split open, filled with big, billowing dollops of chantilly cream and finished with a generous slug of Plantation rum. Va va voom.

Va va voom indeed. That sums up the Station Road experience. A rock star chef, a strong concept, an exciting addition to the city line-up. It’s open for a snack, a drink, or a full-blown meal, so make it part of your festival adventures.